RFE/RL Films To Screen At One World Festival In Prague

Three RFE/RL documentaries were selected for screening at the 19th annual One World Festival, which will take place in Prague, Czech Republic from March 6-15, 2017.

The films Rebel Beats, Poisoned Truth, and I Am What I Am Not will be screened at special RFE/RL evenings for short documentary and reportage that will include panel discussions with the filmmakers on March 8 and 12.

"The selection of RFE/RL TV documentaries illustrates once again how far RFE/RL is from being just a radio operation,” said RFE/RL Vice President and Editor-In-Chief Nenad Pejic. “It is great pleasure to see that the quality of our video operation has been recognized by the One World Festival.”

Very different in terms of genre and format, the three selected films represent the breadth and depth of RFE/RL documentary video and film production last year.

Rebel Beats (2016), a film by the Afghan Service’s Omid Marzban is the story of Afghanistan’s first female rapper, who takes on controversial issues in her songs like violence against women, child marriages, and honor killings.

The film Poisoned Truth (2016) by Sanat Urnaliyev of the Kazakh Service is the first serious journalistic investigation into the mysterious fainting of local schoolchildren in Berezovka, Kazakhstan. Residents had suffered unexplained illnesses for years, but after a spate of fainting spells among school children starting in 2014, the government finally agreed to relocate the villagers from their homes near one of the world’s largest oil and gas fields, which locals had long suspected was the cause of their illness. The documentary contains exclusive footage, including interviews with authorities and affected families.

I Am What I Am Not by Sergey Khazov-Cassia is from the Russian Service’s Signs of Life series. The film tells the story of Tapir, who identifies as neither male nor female, but somewhere in between. Tapir discovered that the quest for happiness is far more important than choosing between gender stereotypes.